


Holding Nothing Back

by Nary



Category: Diablotin
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, First Time, Reincarnation, Romance, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-03
Updated: 2010-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/pseuds/Nary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rab was eighty-seven years old when he fell in love for the last time, and the first time in his seventh life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holding Nothing Back

Rab was eighty-seven years old when he fell in love for the last time, and the first time in his seventh life. He looked perhaps eighteen, and had originally entered this world just over twelve centuries before. And he loved a mortal - not to say that he couldn't die, to be sure, and Pasith Belden was, admittedly, far from an ordinary woman, but it would have been a difficult hurdle for any relationship to overcome.

And yet, somehow, when he realized that he loved her (which, he would have been the first to agree, took an inordinately long time), it was as if all of those years fell away, and he really was eighteen again. It felt like spring instead of autumn in that long-empty house the first time his lips met hers.

His job was to protect her, for reasons even he did not fully understand. Even before he loved her (or at least before he knew he loved her) he would have died for her, because it was his duty. Afterwards, he would have gladly surrendered his soul to the Void if it would have ensured her safety, and he needed no higher power to bind him to her (though the ways of the Centre are mysterious indeed, and who can say that his love did not originate there?)

Both of them had been hurt before - it would be foolish to claim one was more wounded than the other, for how can another's pain be measured? Suffice it to say, they had both been hurt, and still they trusted enough to reach their hands out to one another in a time of need, to stand at last before each other, naked and unashamed.

Rab's gift was for hiding. He had chosen it, he supposed, because there had been many times, in many lives, when he had wished to disappear. But he could no longer hide from her honest gaze. He found he didn't want to. Instead, he let her eyes rove over him, taking in every detail. The Seventh were ordinary enough - none of them would stand out in a crowd. They were none of them too tall, too short, too fat or too thin. Rab, being young and active, was well-muscled, but not unusually so. His hair, his only concession to vanity, was a rich shade of brown, and fell over his strong shoulders in a silken cascade. He was at once eager and nervous, like any young man seeing the body of his beloved for the first time.

Pasith herself would not have stood out in a crowd. At that moment, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. The rays of the setting sun darted through the window to touch her, casting a golden luster over her short-cropped tawny hair, her tanned skin, the strong planes of her face, the sturdy lines of her body. Her breasts were small, high, and gently curved. Her nose had a delightful tilt to it, and her smile as she reached out for him took his breath away. Her hands, not soft and pampered but roughened by hard work, felt exquisite on him.

Holy does not have to mean pure. The gods made us to experience life, to savour it with all our senses and still ask for more. The meeting of lovers' flesh is surely one of their greatest gifts (the clerics of the Cat would call it the greatest without reservation). Any shyness Rab felt soon vanished like the sunlight. He pulled her to him boldly with sword-callused hands, sending shivers up her spine. Her hair bristled softly like velvet under his fingers. Her lips parted before his tongue as he tasted her, and one or the other let out a moan as they tumbled to the straw mattress of her bed.

No time for patience, not when they have waited so long. If the gods see fit, they will have years (might he dare to hope for centuries?) in which to go slowly. If that is not to be, then tonight haste is a blessing. He is allowed to be young and careless for once. She is impatient now too, pulling him onto her, into her, with a soft-voiced cry. He moves on her behalf, driven as much by half-remembered knowledge of womens' pleasures as by the requests she gasps against his ear: "Oh please, just like that, don't stop," and soon enough, "Ahh, yes, go harder now, harder, mmmMMM!" His own climax is nearly silent, except for the fierce pounding of his heart, but all his muscles tense and shudder, his nerves all fire at once, and he feels like he might fall into those hazel eyes of hers and never surface.

And then it was as if all of his burdens were lifted for a time. Pillowed against her chest, listening to her gradually-slowing breath, he could rest peacefully, once he knew that she was sleeping. They curled around each other protectively, their skin shining silver in the moonlight.

Love, even between two ordinary people, is rarely simple. Rab had six lifetimes' worth of experience to tell him so. To love when either of you might die at any moment, to know that even if you are spared today, one of you will age and wither before the other's eyes, to love even while knowing that after death you could be separated for all eternity by the unknowable will of the gods. And even so, they loved, holding nothing back. And sometimes what man and woman have joined together, even the gods will not sunder.


End file.
